Six Months in the Federal States Author:Edward Dicey Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: NEW YORK TO WASHINGTON. It was always a trouble to me in America, choosing where I should go next. It was not the embarras de richesse, but the embarras de pa... more »uvreU. One place was so marvellously like the other, that it was hard to decide why you should go to one place in preference to another. I always have had the keenest sympathy for the ass in the fable, who was unable to make up his mind between the two bundles of hay that hung on either side of him. Hay is excellent food and well deserves eating ; but when bundle of hay number one is the exact counterpart of bundle number two, how is an irresolute ass to decide which best deserves munching ? This was my own state of mind, I confess frankly, with regard to my route in America. The country is well worth seeing—how well worth seeing I never knew till I had travelled over it; but still, one American town is just as well worth seeing as its neighbour, and not more. Columbus (Ohio) is extremely like Springfield (Indiana), and both are the very counterparts of Lafayetteville(Missouri). All are worth visiting, but why should you give the preference to Springfield over Columbus, or to Lafayetteville over both? This is a dilemma which I could never get out of, and whose solution perplexed me from the day I entered the States to the day I left them. The first time the problem presented itself to me in all its difficulty was on leaving New York. I had intended to go from thence to Boston ; but the question was propounded to me, whether it was not better to go to Washington first instead. If the solution had been left to my unassisted powers of decision, I should probably be residing at this present moment in the Everett House, New York, making up my mind where to go next. Happily, I had two motives which decided the course of my journ...« less